The Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT grilled the Twitter executives on Friday (June 18). Twitter indulged in excuses as it did previously.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT grilled Twitter public policy manager Shagufta Kamran and legal counsel Ayushi Kapoor for 90 minutes, telling Twitter to follow the law of the land.
Twitter gave verbal assurance that they were working in that direction. But, told the House panel their policies were equally important.
Twitter has remained defiant all along. After missing multiple deadlines, they have still not come up with any concrete plan.
The committee will summon the Twitter officials soon.
Twitter officials informed the panel that ‘manipulated media’ were purely an algorithm function, devoid of any subjectivity. The microblogging platform had designated many tweets of ruling party members as ‘manipulated media’.
Earlier, the verified tick of many RSS functionaries was removed, including that of Sarsanghchalak Shri Mohan Bhagwat. Twitter has also removed the verified tick from the personal handle of Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu.
The Union government had withdrawn the intermediary status of the platform recently.
In January this year, despite requests from the Union government to remove or restrict handles promoting violence during the Republic Day riots, Twitter did not comply with the order.
In the Ghaziabad thrashing incident, the Uttar Pradesh Police had previously filed an FIR against Twitter for propagating false information. Several fake videos have gone viral claiming that the victim, Abdul Samad Saifi, was beaten up for not chanting Jai Shri Ram. Investigation revealed it was a personal fight.
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